Quote of the Day: A Terrifying Reality Edition

“The argument that owning an assault weapon leads to greater security is specious. In fact, owning a weapon in order to use it for self-protection is not self-defense. It is vigilante law enforcement. That makes for entertaining movies and a terrifying reality.” – Sally Higginson in Highland Park Council Votes to Ban Assault Weapons [at patch.com] (h/t Toasty)

While I wholeheartedly agree with you, we should probably keep the name calling to a minimum. 🙂 She and we are on opposite sides, but it doesn’t make our argument any stronger, by reducing ourselves to name calling. We’ll leave that to them.

Merely owning a car doesn’t give you greater mobility – if you can’t operate it safely on the streets, you’ll end up killing someone. Search “driving while texting” or “senior citizen automobile accident” for details.

RepubAnon: So the solution, obviously, is that we must restrict the ownership of cars to law enforcement and the military, since only they can possibly receive the proper training to handle automobiles safely. How dare you try to drive a vehicle and endanger others with your vigilante self-transportation!? You want to own a car, tough guy? Then enlist!

I suppose you need to be a properly trained bus driver if you want to operate a motor vehicle, that or a private driver. Because those are obviously the only people with enough training and licensing to operate a motor vehicle safely, since they never cause accidents on the streets.
Terrifying reality indeed one where everybody is given an opportunity to drive on the road…

Keep in mind, the main problem with “car” analogies is that there is no natural, fundamental, inalienable human, individual, civil and Constitutional right to own and operate a car like there clearly is for keeping and carrying firearms.

Locks on doors are rarely used as offensive weapons (unless you take it off the door and put it in a sock for use as a blackjack). Assault weapons and other firearms, as George Zimmerman can tell you, often lead people into thinking that the best defense is a strong offense. It’s great when you’re right about the danger, tragic when you’re wrong.

It’s like cars – the newspapers carry stories regularly about someone who thinks merely owning a car gives them increased mobility. Look up “senior citizen car crashes” and “driving while texting” for why buying a car doesn’t magically give the owner the ability to safely use the vehicle for transportation.

All of which boils down to the point made in the last post about the homeowner in rural Georgia who purchased a handgun for self-defense: just buying the weapon isn’t enough – one needs the associated skill set as well if one plans to use the weapon for self-defense in a combat situation.

If your neighborhood is so dangerous (and police response time so slow) that the threats to your personal safety from criminals outweigh the risks of owning and storing a firearm – and if they do, what type of firearm would best address the threat? Handgun or long arm? Revolver, semi-automatic pistol, pump-action shotgun, or semi-automatic “assault-type” rifle?

I’d submit that if you really live in a war zone where you need a military-grade weapon such as an AR-15 “assault rifle*” for your personal safety, you might want to think about moving, or at least improving your home’s perimeter defenses to resist stray rounds and keep the threat at arm’s length while you prepare your response.

* Yeah, I know – the AR-15 doesn’t fire full automatic, so it’s not technically an “assault rifle”. I also know that the old semi/fully automatic selector switch on the M-16 A2 was eliminated in later models to avoid wasting ammo, and having the whole squad empty their rifles at the same time.

Here’s a better angle: It doesn’t matter whether I want an AR-15 for self-defense, for hog hunting, or to just take to the range for recreational shooting. No matter what the use, I don’t owe you, our lawmakers, or anyone else a goddamn explanation for why I own it. Capisce?

Locks on doors only buy you time, they are not a sound means of defense.

People get so wrapped around the axle about guns being “offensive in nature, therefore they cannot be defensive”. This is such a idiotic line of reasoning. If that were the case, there would be no such thing as militaries or police.

Actually AR15s are awesome for home defense. They have less of a risk of over penetrating than pistols or shotguns, provided you dont use M855 green tip.

Can’t fix stupid… Maybe X bad guys from Chicago will target her house first since she is telling the world her home is a gun free zone. Then do Y crimes at her house. = the fact she will come to reality the cops can’t be there as fast as you need them.

She was talking about “assault weapons” – there’s no inconsistency between owning a firearm suitable for home defense use by someone with minimal training (say, a pump-action shotgun or a revolver) and owning an AR-15 with a number of large-capacity magazines.

Its a very sad commentary on society that any confrontation, any suggestion of confrontation, any suggestion that you would be prepared to defend against a confrontation or the perpetration of a crime are all seen as equal and equally repugnant. Of course we are talking about people who largely have never flirted with the possibility of a personal assault and thus believe these things never really happen (in their bubble world) and who are compulsive in their need to control their environment that they must, then, by extension control you, in yours; and by that are “preserving” society. I’m not a psychiatrist but I expect they have a name for this.

I suspect that many people like her may in fact be hypocrites, but also that many really would simply submit to an attacker and hope for the best. Some of them may actually be quite intelligent, many are surely very stupid. Their common thread, and that which separates ‘them’ from ‘us’ is denial. Sheep are sheep because they have a high degree of denial. Denial of the realities of violence and even it’s possible existence. It’s an irrational state but also a fairly common one. Interpersonal violence is almost universally terrifying and degrading and thus they cannot consider it’s possibility, which precludes any sort of preparedness for it.

Shedding the denial is what defines a sheepdog. Of course we think this sheep is stupid, perhaps it is. But it’s still part of the flock. Whishing troublesome sheep ill isn’t what sheepdogs do, that’s for wolves.

Just because a police officer uses a weapon in defense of himself or herself, that doesn’t make it law enforcement. Indeed, a police officer’s firearm is not used to enforce the laws; it is only a tool to defend the officer while he or she is enforcing the laws. Sally has it back-asswards.

I suspect that she means the George Zimmerman situation: where someone gets tired of all the crime around their neighborhood and decides to be “proactive” about stopping the criminals.

Safely carrying a concealed weapon and making a shoot/don’t shoot decision requires constant training and practice. Too many people skip that part, and go straight to the “I have a gun, so I’m safe” mode without thinking that that guy ten feet away with a knife can get you first. (Twenty-one foot rule.)

I watch people carelessly handle their cars every day – the thought of these people operating firearms with the same disregard for basic safety considerations that they observe when operating their vehicles makes me nervous. In my situation, armed neighbors would pose a greater danger to me than criminals. But then, I picked a low-crime neighborhood and am careful about my surroundings.

People mostly appear to handle their cars in an irresponsible manner due to their extreme familiarity with the vehicle. The fact that the average person never harms anyone with a car is testament to the safety conditioned into them.

Consider that even the most highly trained and experienced operator is never going to achieve the level of familiarity with weapons the average commuter has with driving. When the training and experience reach a high enough level much of what is done with firearms looks careless or dangerous unless it is closely observed by an informed person. Then all the automatic and ingrained rules of safe handling and the extremities of skill in use begin to show.

The same is true of drivers, they check mirrors, maintain contact with the steering wheel, moderate their speed and do all sorts of automatic things that allow them to operate the vehicle without injury to themselves or others.

Are there very irresponsible drivers? Of course, and their are people who are irresponsible with firearms. Of course this means that they need training or an adjustment of attitude towards their responsibilities, perhaps even individual sanctions. It most certainly does not mean that we should ban either cars or guns. It’s highly unethical to punish the many for the misdeeds of the few.

Oh my Gosh…did she really just say that defending my family from a home invasion is vigilante law enforcement? I’m flabbergasted…so I am supposed to call the police, sit there while my things are stolen, my wife is raped, I’m assaulted…whatever. And hope that the police arrive in time to enforce the law. Am I allowed to fight with my fists and feet, or is this also a form of vigilantism?

2020: If your home is broken into, you are required to show the thief where your valuables are located, drop your pants, and bend over; not doing so will result in a life sentence with no bail for “vigilante justice”

Highland Park must be a nice place to live -a practical paradise, if this sort of attitude can flourish there. I need to look into moving, because seriously…. Having a 10 second police response time must be really nice.

These people have their heads buried so far up their rears, their chiropractors must be millionaires.

You better have a lot of money. Not only are homes expensive, but property taxes are through the roof. Last I was up there, I don’t think there was any public/low income housing at all. This is a very upper middle class white bread suburb that is a long drive from Chicago and its issues. Remember the houses and the neighborhood in “Home Alone”? That was shot in Winnetka (and yes, it really does look like that)–Highland Park is another 15 minutes north.

I see the Highland Park vote as having a different motivation that is assumed above. The ‘city’ is half the size, half the population, but with an identical LEO per resident ratio and almost identical median family income and per capita income as the township I live in, so I have some feel for the mood: Highland Park isn’t afraid of poor muggers coming through. In their minds cops and a home pistol or bird gun can handle that. They are completely fixated on avoiding an Adam Lanza-type disaster. And, no doubt, they have a few similarly troubled kids being sheltered by similar parents, so don’t laugh at their fears. Better they should each get to know their neighbors. If they spot a potential “Adam and Nancy” they should extend a helping hand…in time.

Words like “specious” will do you no good whatsoever if a gangbanger from Englewood is attacking you. In fact, your entire repertoire of vocabulary and wit will be useless. A Glock, however, would be an excellent self defense tool. That’s why your precious police use them. Your ignorance and arrogance are specious in providing you security.

This sort of attitude is being inculcated in public schools now, too. I remember in 8th grade, I got in a fight with a kid. Now, I had done nothing to him, he was simply a bully and felt I ought to be intimidated by him, and I wasn’t. He threw the first punch. I defended myself. We were both punished equally, because apparently the “proper course of action” nowadays is not to defend yourself, not to even block the punch (that might be aggression, you see….) just take it, and then go running to the authority figures. This is a stupid policy when it comes to schoolyard fisticuffs, but it’s a downright horrible policy when it comes to the real world and the bad guys are using Hi-Points instead of knuckles.

People don’t want to take responsibility. It’s easier to let daddy, or the teacher, or Big Brother take care of you. Why go to all the trouble to be a free man when it’s so much easier to be a slave?

So, when a home invader breaks into her house, beats her senseless (easy task that, apparently), rapes her, steals all valuables and kills that damn bird, she will have peace of mind over it because she didn’t stoop to “vigilantism”…to each his own. Me? I won’t stoop to vigilantism…I’ll give it a Bear Hug and wet sloppy kiss right after I shoot that home invader to the next world…which one of us will really have peace of mind afterwards?

I am not sure this kind of thinking is growing, but it is getting the Lion’s Share of MSM media attention in all forms of publication. That’s a major problem.

Perhaps, but most people who are not as rich or as white or as protected as she is will see through it in a heartbeat as the elitist, racist crap that it is. May actually expose more people in the middle to our prespective. The rest? Those are people that will never change their views until they are personally exposed to uncontained, uncontrollable violence, and a few of them will not change even then.

For her; the government has the only lawful monopoly of force; for a subject like her; (she is not a citizen) she truly FEELS that it is completely illegal to use lethal force to defend herself.

In reality, she has the mindset of all peasants, peons and slaves; it’s because of people like her, that a small group of psychopathic thugs, aka- most governments; can rule the vast majority of people as virtual if not outright slaves.

When is Ms. Higginson going to present a commendation to Mr. Petit for being an outstanding, unarmed citizen who refused to “dole out vigilante justice”?

For those of you who are not familiar, in 2007 two criminals entered Mr. Petit’s home and beat him until they thought he was dead and then proceeded to rape Mr. Petit’s 11 year old daughter and wife … finally tying up both of his daughters and his wife to their beds and burning them alive. Somehow, Mr. Petit miraculously survived. His wife and daughters did not.

I’ll bet Mr. Petit would give anything to have had a semi-automatic rifle in his hands when the two violent criminals came through his door that day.

A Highland Park resident really needs to present this to Ms. Higginson at their next City Council meeting. I am totally serious. Someone needs to formally present this to her with pertinent details and formally request that the Highland Park City Council recognize Mr. Petit for being and outstanding citizen. The petitioner should also request/urge the city council to give him a “key to the city” of Highland Park.

That same Highland Park resident should also formally request that the Highland Park City Council formally condemn Mrs. Sherri Shepherd (co-host of the television show The View) for announcing that she is going to purchase a firearm for self defense in her apartment after a frightening event where her alarm indicated an intruder.

Again, I am completely serious. We cannot be “nice” to people like Ms. Higginson and her ilk.

As I recall one thug escorted the wife/mother to the bank to withdraw money while the other held the rest of the family (I think there were 2 daughters) hostage. The wife slipped a note to the bank teller who called 911, after which it took the police 33 minutes to show up.

That is about correct. Whatever the specific timeline or difficulties the police had in finding the residence, the end result was that the criminals managed to rape the wife and one daughter, and set the residence ablaze with the wife and both of her daughters inside and still alive and fully conscious.

This single example illustrates both the folly of facing violent criminals unarmed and the folly of thinking that police will save you from violent criminals.

The problem there was a failure of perimeter defenses, not whether Mr. Petit owned an assault rifle. Would the assault rifle really have been in his hands, loaded and ready? Even so, would he have been ready to react properly?

Plus, why an “assault rifle” rather than a pump-action shotgun, or even a handgun? Had Mr. Petit had time to pull his family into a safe room, trigger the home alarm system, and cover the door with a shotgun, the criminals would likely have run off rather than engage in a protracted firefight.

Have you ever considered the possibility that if a gun had been present, Mrs. Petit might have been able to intervene? Sure, better perimeter defense would definitely have helped, but even so, if she had had access to a weapon, things could have turned out much better for them.

And as for weapon selection, many women find ARs easier to handle than shotguns, and find follow-up shots to be much easier with 5.56 than 12 gauge. The collapsible stocks allow them to quickly fit the gun to them, and that way even a large guy and a small woman (or vice versa) can use the same gun.

Finally, anti-gun people just love them some pump action shotguns, and I don’t know why. It’s like they think they shoot rainbows or something. A 12 gauge loaded with 00 buck shoots nine approximately .30 caliber pellets with each pull of the trigger. The tubular magazine means if you’re good at loading, the gun is basically bottomless. Yet they’re the “safe” alternative to “assault weapons”.

The problem with states like Illinois is that about 3/4 of the population live in the Chicago metropolitan area, so Chicagoans rule the state. The feds can force them to free the hicks out in the country, but no way is the civilized urban population going to stand for that sort of thing in their neighborhoods.

Hmm… fast forward 2-3 years when there may be a half million concealed carriers in the state of Illinois, plus dramatically expanded firearms ownership, at least in most areas. Sooner or later, the bad guys and thugs are going to come to their senses – most of them are not as stupid as we may hope – and realize that if their risk of getting shot is the same or better, or even their risk of getting caught is at least not significantly worse, they might as well up their game and start robbing and hurting people in the rich enclaves around Chicago. Then they’ll come a knocking and a kicking. I wonder what will happen then?

Dang, TTAG’s Quote of the Day feature has damn near filled the “Stupidest thing I’ve heard/read all day” section of my brain. I have literally shouted expletives after reading some of these. How can people be so obtuse? The “it can never happen to me/in this neighborhood” attitude drives me nuts. Why cant everybody just accept the fact that no matter what we do evil will ALWAYS exist in this world? I am no vigilante, I just accept the truth, and have prepared to deal with it should it ever decide to introduce itself to me.

This. Its 730 in the morning here in cali and I was looking forward to another few hours of peaceful, mellow thoughts. But now, I will be facing the rest of my day cross-eyed and red-faced thanks to this woman’s stunning lack of intelligence.

Yeah, normally I wouldn’t wish anyone harm. But in working to make others in the community more vulnerable to crime, she and her allies on this issue richly deserve the first taste of any additional crime that comes to Highland Park. It will probably be the innocent that suffer, though.

If these people want to live in a delusional state of mind with others of like mind, in a society that allows this mindset to become law & enforced, England and others as an example, act to make it a reallity in this country should be forcibly extradited.

That is the way it was after the Revolutionary War. You had the freedom of speech, but not the freedom to act against the Conditional Rights of others.

That is Treason, as defined by our law. It is time We the People stood up for this in common voice of trust in our ability of self-governance, rather than trusting others to Deceptively Rule over us when no power truly exists in this capacity according to the Constitution.

Highland Park is the Midwest’s answer to Beverly Hills.A lot of money lives there.Its the kind of town where a $50,000 BMW is what the parents buy their kids on their 16th birthday.Darn near everyone in that town lives in an alternate reality.That is the best I can describe it; the closest anyone in that places comes to real life crime is an episode of NCIS.If someone has a fender bender at 4:00pm ,may God have mercy on their soul,because every cop in the city will respond out of sheer boredom.

Considering her sheltered background ,I actually pity her.She’s lived her whole life in Utopia and thinks the entire US is just like her little corner of it .The only way that illusion will end is via a traumatic attack.

I bet you because in Highland Park the cops don’t just respond after the fact. I bet a nice stack of beer that they do a lot of “proactive policing,” as in harassment and “what are you doing here?” and pre-textual traffice stops (as in “Sir, you were driving 41 in a 40 – I’ll have to cite you for that”) directed at a lot of non-white people. At least the ones not driving a Bentley. Probably feels a lot of Alabama in the 1930s. Hard to get away with crime if you stand out from the crowd.

If these people truly had the courage of their convictions, they would welcome a chance to live unarmed in the South side. Strictly speaking, though, I guess this argument is focused on only on Highland Park and it’s rules. Still, I would like to see the question posed to them.

People like Ms. Higginson enjoy being in a position of authority. The more people depend on them, the more authority they have. It’s megalomania on a small scale. Just sit tight and wait for the professionals to arrive. Next they’ll be banning fire extinguishers. We have professionals for that too. If people start taking responsibility for their own safety, next thing they’ll start thinking for themselves (gasp).

I have actually heard a Fire Chief give a public comment years ago when I lived in Texas regarding a house fire where the owner was injured trying to put it out. Chief said something along the lines that fire extinguishers were more harm than good and if something catches fire, the smart thing to do is to leave the house immediately and call the FD.

I think you are dead on about the authority thing. “Just let us handle it,” leads to the perception of safety, which frequently means abrogating personal responsibility. And I am not saying that I am as good at putting out a fire as a professional, but I’ve got three extinguishers in my house.

Since the anti’s can’t wait for there to be another mass murder at a school, I can’t wait for one of them to be attacked without their trusted government thugs nearby to protect them. Maybe it takes being victimized to understand why one ought to take responsibility for their own self defense.

You call it vigilantism, I call it justifiable homicide. Call it whatever you want, as long as good people can put bad guys at room temperature, and protect their families, I know I’m with the moral high ground on this one. So play semantics all you want, you blowhard community organizer.

If we use this dingbats argument all cops cannot own or use ARs or any semi auto pistol or rifle either cops been known to be vigilantes and so disarm the fascist CPD and other government LEs government first.

Just another sheltered suburban liberal whose conception of guns is derived almost completely from movies. You’d think she’d have realized that the movies don’t portray anything realistically the first time she asked herself “how come my sex life isn’t the steamy romp it is in the movies?” Well, two reasons, Sally.

Some might be inclined to say the difference between a so-called ‘new-age liberal’ and a parakeet is that no reasonable person really expects a parakeet to actually know anything. Others might go on to suggest something to the effect that certain people would be further ahead to just let their bird do all the talking — but for the record, I’m not one of those people.

FWIW. Common knowledge holds the most frequently used weapons in assaults are hands and feet; followed by blunt and sharp instruments, and thereafter menacing looking Assault Birds with features like protruding beaks and sharp talons.

“Assault style weapons and high capacity magazines are not designed for protection,” Gordon said. “They are designed for killing.”

Are we saying that weapons designed for protection are not designed for killing? It appears to me that a weapon (be a pump shotgun or an AK) could be used for killing or protection.

“The argument that owning an assault weapon leads to greater security is specious,” she said. “In fact, owning a weapon in order to use it for self-protection is not self-defense. It is vigilante law enforcement. That makes for entertaining movies and a terrifying reality.”

So using a weapon that you own for for self defense against an armed intruder is not self protection? What is the difference between self-protection and self-defense. How is owning an assault weapon vigilante law enforcement??

Some one should have walked in and said “You guys line up alphabetically by height!”